Loritz was very resentful of this and made me only too clearly aware of his dislike.
In his opinion everyone in Sachsenhausen was treated much too softly, SS men and prisoners alike.
In the meantime Commandant Baranowski, who was an old man, had died and Eicke, who had enough on his hands with the formation of his new division, let Loritz do much as he liked.
Glücks had never cared much for Baranowski. Loritz’s return to the concentration camp suited him very well. In him he saw one of the “old guard” commandants, who would give him full support in his new post of Inspector of Concentration Camps.
When the question of building a new camp at Auschwitz became urgent, the authorities had not far to go for a commandant. Loritz was glad to let me go, so that he could find a commander of the protective custody camp more to his liking. This was Suhren, later to be commandant of Ravensbrück, who had been Loritz’s adjutant in the General SS.
I therefore became commandant of the quarantine camp which was to be built at Auschwitz.
It was far away, in the back of beyond, in Poland. There the inconvenient Hoess could exercise his passion for work to his heart’s content. That was what Glücks, the Inspector of Concentration Camps, had intended. It was in these circumstances that I took up my new task.
I had never anticipated being made a commandant so quickly, especially as some very senior protective custody camp commanders had been waiting a long time for a commandant’s post to fall vacant.
My task was not an easy one. In the shortest possible time I had to construct a transit camp for ten thousand prisoners, using the existing complex of buildings which, though well-constructed, had been completely neglected and were swarming with vermin. From the point of view of hygiene, practically everything was lacking. I had been told in Oranienburg, before setting off, that I could not expect much help, and that I would have to rely largely on my own resources. In Poland I would find everything that had been unobtainable in Germany for years!
It is much easier to build a completely new concentration camp than to construct one quickly out of a conglomeration of buildings and barracks which require a large amount of constructional alteration. I had hardly arrived in Auschwitz before the Inspector of the Security Police and of the Security Service in Breslau was inquiring when the first transports could be sent to me!
It was clear to me from the very beginning that Auschwitz could be made into a useful camp only through the hard and untiring efforts of everyone, from the commandant down to the lowest prisoner.
But in order to harness all the available manpower to this task, I had to ignore all concentration camp tradition and customs. If I was to get the maximum effort out of my officers and men, I had to set them a good example. When reveille sounded for the SS rankers, I too must get out of bed. Before they had started their day’s work, I had already begun mine. It was late at night before I had finished. There were very few nights in Auschwitz when I could sleep undisturbed by urgent telephone calls.
If I wanted to get good and useful work out of the prisoners then, contrary to the usual and universal practice in concentration camps, they must be given better treatment. I assumed that I would succeed in both housing and feeding them better than in the other camps.
Everything that, from my point of view, seerned wrong in the other camps, I wished to handle differently here.
I believed that in such conditions I could obtain the willing cooperation of the prisoners in the constructional work that had to be done. I also felt that I could then demand the maximum effort from them.
I had complete confidence in these assumptions. Nevertheless, within a few months, I might even say during the first weeks, I became bitterly aware that all good will and all the best intentions were doomed to be dashed to pieces against the human inadequacy and sheer stupidity of most of the officers and men posted to me.
I used every means at my disposal to make all my fellow workers understand my wishes and intentions, and I attempted to make it clear to them that this was the only practicable way of getting everyone to co-operate fruitfully in completing the task assigned us.
My good intentions were in vain. Over the years the teaching of Eicke, Koch, and Loritz had penetrated so deeply into the minds of the “old hands,” and had become so much ä part of their flesh and blood, that even the best-willed of them simply could not behave otherwise than in the way to which they had become accustomed during long service in the concentration camps. The “beginners” were quick to learn from the “old hands,” but the lessons they learned were unfortunately not the best.
All my endeavors to obtain at least a few good and competent officers and noncommissioned officers for Auschwitz from the Inspector of Concentration Camps were of no avail. Glücks simply would not co-operate. It was the same with the prisoners who were to act as supervisors of the others. The Rapportführer Palitzsch was to find thirty useful professional criminals of all trades, since the RSHA[41] would not let me have politicals for this purpose at Auschwitz.
He brought back thirty of these, whom he considered the best among those offered to him at Sachsenhausen.
Less than ten of them were suited to my wishes and intentions.
Palitzsch had selected these men according to his own opinions and his own ideas as to how prisoners should be treated, which he had already acquired and to which he had grown used. He was by disposition incapable of behaving in any other way.
So the whole backbone about which the camp was to be built was defective from the start. From the very beginning the camp was dominated by theories which were later to produce the most evil and sinister consequences.
Despite all that, it might have been possible to control these men, and indeed even to bring them around to my way of thinking, if the officer in charge of the prison camp and the Rapportführer had followed my instructions and obeyed my wishes.[42]
But this they neither could nor would do, owing to their intellectual limitations, their obstinacy and malice, and above all for reasons of convenience.
For these men the key prisoners we had been sent were exactly right, right, that is, for the purposes which they envisaged and for their attitude.
The real ruler of every concentration camp is the officer in charge of the prison camp. The commandant may set his stamp upon the outer form of communal camp life, and this will be more or less obvious according to the energy and enthusiasm he devotes to his job. It is he who directs policy, has final authority, and bears ultimate responsibility for all that happens. But the real master of the prisoners’ whole life, and of the entire internal organization, is the officer in charge of the prison camp or alternatively the Rapportführer, if that officer is strong-minded and more intelligent than his immediate superior. The commandant may decide the lines on which the camp is to be run and issue the necessary general orders and regulations concerning the life of the prisoners, as he thinks best. But the way in which his orders are carried out depends entirely on the officers in charge of the prison camp. The commandant is thus entirely dependent on their good will and intelligence.
It follows that if he does not trust them, or considers them incapable, he must take over their duties himself. Only thus can he be certain that his instructions and orders will be carried out in the way he intends. It is hard enough for a regimental commander to be sure that his orders will be carried out correctly at section level in the manner he intends, particularly when they relate to matters other than mere routine. How much harder it is for the commander of a concentration camp to know that all his orders concerning the prisoners, orders which are often of the greatest consequence, will be correctly interpreted and carried out regardless! The Capos always prove particularly difficult to control. For reasons of prestige as well as for disciplinary reasons, the commandant can never interrogate the prisoners concerning the SS set over them: only in extreme cases, with a view to a criminal investigation, can this be done. Even then the prisoners, almost without exception, will say they know nothing or will give evasive replies, for they inevitably fear reprisals.
41
Reichssicherheitshauptamt: Reich Security Head Office, the supreme police and SS headquarters.
42
Owing to the size of Auschwitz there were always a first and a second prison camp commander. The first two at Auschwitz were Karl Fritzsch and Hans Aumeier.